Undefined
by NewQuixote
Summary: The strike and its aftermath, as told by one of Brooklyn's 'little birdies': Janey, who is paid for her information in pennies and connections. The less you stand out, the more you can learn.
1. I: You're not that special

_Disclaimer:_ I do not own _Newsies_, which is the property of Disney and is only used here for fan-related purposes that are not for profit. Any unfamiliar character is the property of its creator.

_Author's note:_ The characters do not always speak properly. This is a first-person narrative, which means there are grammatical errors - run ons, silly drawn out thoughts. These are intentional. The narrator is well-read, yes, but that does not always mean she follows grammatical conventions. Thoughts are not always arranged perfectly. But if there are any they're/their, it's/its, etc. mistakes, feel free to point them out. Those are not intentional.

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><p><em>I: "You're not that special."<em>

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><p>"You're not that special." We were standing three feet apart. I remember wishing there was more distance between us, a physical buffer in lieu of the emotional one that would never be.<p>

"I know." They say that what you don't know won't kill you. But if you know it, and accept it, it seems not to hurt anymore. "It's been an advantage." He could not argue with that. Straight brown hair, blue eyes, average height. Small nose, but it had a bump. Freckled fair skin.

He was smirking and cold, like an ice sculpture of Adonis. "That's why you're not special. You assumed I meant what you look like. What I meant is that you're not that smart." _I've read more books than you, asshole. _

"How much information have I collected for you?" I growled. "How many alleys have I snuck through? How many traitors dealt with because I heard their girls talking about them in the cotton mills, or while twisting wire stems onto silk flowers? I can slip into the tenement district as working class, and leave the other side looking like a rich girl who is lost without her governess."

"Can you fight?" he asked. The ropes and nets hanging from the structures on the dock cast thick, shadowy veins across his face. He already knew the answer. It's why we were here. "You can't fight, little girl."

My heart clenched, pressed hard between the hot plates of a medieval torture device called shame. "I tried," I said, once I knew I wouldn't stammer.

"Life's a bitch if all you can do is try. Which is why someone got soaked within an inch of life. They were choking him to death. He has bruises on his neck shaped like goddamn _hands_. His face and fingernails were blue. He couldn't breathe. You probably have some fancy word for it." Spot Conlon did not spit his words. He enunciated them, adding and subtracting emotion as careful as a cat's step. In this case, he had chosen to emit cruelty by speaking casually. "You do, don't you?" I didn't answer. The false civility ended, and the acid boiled up. "Say it." A command. He was establishing already confirmed dominance, but not because he felt threatened. A bird didn't threaten him. He was just sadistic.

I looked down at my scuffed brown boots and muttered, _"_Asphyxiation." I felt like that now, maybe because of karma, or maybe because his glare was as good as a pillow for smothering.

He uttered a sound that I think should be written as "Hm," but it wasn't pondering. It was a breathy, derisive, one-syllable laugh. "Dictionary?" I nodded. "You just spew what you read. And I mean the street spew, and since you're too good for that I'll translate: it means you vomit what you read back up. Vomit. That's what I think of what you say."

I couldn't glare, couldn't tell him the feeling was mutual. _Be quiet, so he'll want your information. Be meek, he's the reason you have Medda._

"You know what you're supposed to do with your life? What everyone else does. Work to feed yourself, get married to someone you can at least stand and feed each other. Then make the idiot mistake of having kids so you'll feel closer to one another, as if having some whiny, wobbly-headed _things_ with both your blood will make everything bet—look at me." I hadn't looked away but for a moment, had barely gotten a breath from that smothering gaze. But I complied, because I had to, and he continued. "Then the woman has to stay home and take care of them, the kids, and that means there are more mouths and one less job and the husband and wife learn to keep away from each other at night so it doesn't get worse. He'll use gin to warm himself, and if she's lucky he isn't an angry drunk and will hopefully split his paycheck between bottle and home."

"I came from a place like that." That was all I could say, and it made my lower lip tremble.

Spot rolled his eyes away from me, using the classic display of annoyance to hide his unwillingness to make eye contact now, when I pulled him into territory he never wanted to touch. "And I came from a Catholic orphanage."

I bit my lower lip, let out the tense air that had collected in my lungs. "Before the orphanage," I began, "you came from a place like that, too. And you won't look at me, because then that's admitting that in that respect, neither of us are special."

He was looking at the water. The summer night had gone lukewarm. "Go home, little girl." His voice was rough, but it didn't grate against me anymore.

I looked at the same spot of water he was, where the moon cast her image from above. "What's in the moon's reflection, Spot? Memories?" He offered no verbal answer, and I could take none from his face. There was no emotion left. I stayed with him, staring at the moon's rippled reflection as it skimmed the waves. I asked, in a voice as hollow and fragile as a sugar candy stick, "Am I in any of them?" I just wanted to know. We can't define what we are, what this is, and it confuses us. It's because we're proud and shy at the same time. It's never a good place to be.

His voice, when he spoke, was tired. "Little girl – it's late. Medda's probably fussing about you. Go home."

Now I turned to him, staring at his profile because he was too stubborn to look at me. "You know how long her shows go." He only offered a tiny nod. "I think I'd rather look at the moon with you." I tried speaking with a quiet firmness, like Medda can when she's not being the Meadowlark, when she's taking care of me, testing me on my catechism and making me study at night so I don't turn out like her, smiling in her brown skirt and creamy blouse, laughing until her eyes crinkle in the corners without worrying if it will give her wrinkles.

I thought it had been the right thing to say, the right tone to use until his jaw turned hard. "We're not looking at the moon," he said bitterly. "Just her reflection. It's fake."

"It's a real reflection," I offered, still looking at his profile. I thought, _This juxtaposition of fake and real. Fake one way, real another, depends on how you turn it. That's like what we have, Spot. _I wanted to say it, but instead I prepared myself for eye contact and said, "Look at me."

He did. Those three words and the action that was supposed to follow were as close as we might ever get to saying another three words. "I'm looking," he said. There was a path between our eyes, it seemed, waiting for Hansel and Gretel's despondent bread crumbs.

I didn't know what to ask. _Do you like looking at me or the moon's reflection more? Why do we always speak in cryptic codes, like "look at me"? Is "do you like looking at me or the moon's reflection" cryptic or poetry?_ And then I realized I was just staring and he was just staring. "I wanted to ask something profound," I said. "But I can't seem to think of anything... I..."

He moved to speak, and I expected something cruel or curt like, "That's because my hat is smarter than you" or "Tail so-and-so, and don't fuck this one up" but instead he said, "Come over here."

I closed one foot of the distance, which in the cryptic pidgin language that the two of us created yet could barely comprehend meant, "You need to meet me halfway." He walked a foot towards me without protest, which meant he understood.

"Janey?"

"Yeah?" I asked.

"There's a lot of questions." I knew that. They filled the foot of space between us, flitting between our heads. He looked at the watery reflection of the moon again. "There's a lot of questions," he repeated.

"Yeah." I followed his gaze. "Are we looking at the answers?"

"Nothing below the water besides seaweed and rust," he began. "That's why you shouldn't trust pictures of the moon."

"'Luna' is Latin for moon. That's where we get 'lunacy' from," I said, trying to support him.

"Stop that," he said, frustrated but not angry. "That isn't what I meant. Damnit, I just meant don't trust the thing's reflection. You don't need to drag Latin into it. Can we just – stare at the moon together? The real one?"

Juliet didn't want Romeo to swear his love for her by it, because it always changes. The 'inconstant moon'. But we weren't swearing love, we were careful to avoid anything that could be affirmed as "love" or "I love you", opting for "look at me" instead. So we stared in the night, not touching because we didn't know if we should, until he said, "Home, now. I'll walk you." It was a command, but I was pleased by the lack of diminutive.

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><p>I've enabled anonymous reviewing, so even if you don't have an account you can share your opinion. Critiques are loved, even if they point out the bad things. Flamers are mocked by me and the girl down the hall.<p> 


	2. II: Our kitchen smelled like tea

_Disclaimer:_ I do not own _Newsies_, which is the property of Disney and is only used here for fan-related purposes that are not for profit. Any unfamiliar character is the property of its creator.

_Author's note on changes in the first chapter:_ If you read the very original first chapter, before I got extra finicky and changed her name to Janey (because I realized a non-newsie has no need for a newsie name, which seems like something I should have figured out earlier), know that her name is now Janey. Because "Zade" was a Mary Sue waiting to happen. *is shot*

_Author's note on time/distances:_ It's a common misconception that the newsies could go gallivanting all over the city in one day. Google map it, people. Brooklyn to Manhattan is a little under _fourteen miles_. Most people walk a mile in twenty minutes. That's four hours of walking.

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><p><em>II: "Our kitchen smelled like tea."<em>

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><p>Our kitchen smelled like tea. That's where she was, sitting at the table, pulling pins from her hair when I walked into the apartment. Spot had walked me to the entrance of the complex, but I took the rest alone.<p>

"Janey," she said as she dropped them one by one into the small chewing tobacco tin, "you are two hours past curfew."

I was supposed to be home when she was, around one in the morning. "I walked four hours."_ And my legs feel like it._

She knew why. "Information delivery? You don't need to do that, you know. You don't owe him anything." She was so confident.

This woman was the reason I could get an education. She wasn't Pulitzer-rich, but she didn't need to be. She reused her costumes, you know. Only a few dresses, with different combinations of ribbons and loops of pearls attached by hidden buttons. She was clever like that. The money she didn't spend on costumes she put away, or into our four room apartment - two bedrooms, a bathroom for the two of us, and a kitchen/common area. We were lucky to be outside of a tenement. I didn't have run around the city all day collecting information and sneaking into the factories I would never have to work in, thanks to Medda. There was a teaching certificate in my near future. But the reason I had her was Spot. "He introduced us," I said, looking at her.

"Out there, it's a man's world," she said bitterly.

"I know," I said, unlacing my boots. I'd heard this before.

She took a breath. "In here, it's our world. And I wouldn't give you up, just because you left that behind."

I stood and kicked my boots off. Naturally I was inclined to let them lie haphazardly on their sides, but out of respect for Medda I stood them up neatly next to her, laces tucked in. "It's not that, it isn't. But without Spot, there would be no you."

"We've been here, together, for five years," she said, gesturing to the walls around us, stopping at a small photograph of us. It was only a year old, the dark areas around my eyes lighter. "You've been walking four hours each way, every day, since you were twelve.

"I don't walk there every day," I muttered tiredly. I could already tell it was the only way I could get out of the situation: pretend to be tired, worn down.

She shook her head. "You spy every day. You've paid your dues."

She didn't know I took a small amount of money. Spot knew not to tell her._ But even then_, I reasoned with myself, _it's only a penny or two a day, from Brooklyn's emergency fund._ Spot had been surprised to find out none of the other boroughs kept one. I was surprised none of the other boroughs had figured out he had one: Spot's boys always got doctor's care, always had at least a bit of food once a day, a semi-warm jacket, paid for by everyone's monthly dues. They didn't care, either - that they had to pay. They knew it had covered everyone's ass: Spot let them know it paid a secret bird a small sum. Two territory invasions avoided, thanks to this mysterious unnamed bird. He had planned it that way, the payment. Small, so everyone assumed it was to supplement the income of someone who was already a newsie. And the payment existed to prove my nameless existence: yeah, the bird exists. We pay the bird. So it must be true Queens is on the move into our territory, because Spot wouldn't pay a dumbass. He had offered to pay, and I hadn't refused. I'd saved it up, in case she didn't want me anymore.

"Yeah. But..."

"There is no love there; it is infatuation. Your infatuation only, Janey, we both know it is one-sided." So there. She had decided it was a crush, unwittingly creating a cover story. At the time, it was insulting she had reduced me to an infatuated girl-puppy at the heels of someone we both knew would never pat my head. I was infatuated, yes, stupidly so. But that was not why I stayed. I stayed because I owed it to him that I had Medda, and if I lost Medda I needed the money and security.

I pretended to sulk. This new story required a different escape tactic than tired, though it was much easier to perform: sulky girl, caught in the throes of teenage heartache. "I don't want to study."

She rolled her eyes. "I wouldn't make you. It's three in the morning. Go to bed." I pretended to pout until I slipped into the safety of my room. It was plain, like I liked it. I could never work or sleep in a place like Medda's room: who could do mathematics in a frothy pink pastry? I sat on the blue blanket that covered my bed, iron painted white, and pulled off my stockings. The drapes were closed, the window locked. I double checked both before I left home each morning. I went through the mundane routine of getting prepared for bed: _nightgown, dressing gown, ignore Medda at the table, still plucking those infinitely numbered pins from her hair, on my way to the bathroom. Brush teeth, wash face, look at yourself._ When I was younger, I wanted to cut the small bump off my nose. I would have, if the scar and the pain would not have been worse, if it would not have made me an easy mark when the rest of me was so perfectly normal.

I looked at myself in the mirror, at the dark circles Medda fussed about because she loved me and Spot mentioned because lack of sleep negatively affects productivity. I had to get up at six, get out of the door by half past, and wander around Manhattan. That's what Spot said when we were two blocks from my home. "Wander around Manhattan, and get what you can."

"Anyone in particular?" I asked

"No. You'll be doing it for a few days, though. Don't bother reporting unless something interesting happens."

"When do you want me to report?" He glared, maybe because he thought I had made it clear already. "If something doesn't happen that's worth it."

He sighed. "By Sunday."

I nodded. "Right."

We walked in silence until we were just a shadow away from the door to my building, hidden in the darkness cast by a nearby grocer's awning. He stopped, and I wanted an embrace, but only if he would mean it. And he wouldn't, ever. Girls made eyes at him, but they were the ones who made eyes at everyone. He didn't respond to them right away, though I caught him staring at some girls when he didn't know I would see it. Not beautiful girls, necessarily, not Guineveres and Godivas. The smart ones. And it was a stare of blank respect, that could or could not turn into more if given the opportunity. He was too busy to pay attention to that opportunity.

"Are you staying here tonight?"

He looked at me like I was an idiot. "I'm heading home."

"But you have to sell tomorrow. It's another four hour walk."

He shrugged. "I'd hafta make it in the morning anyway. Go."

I assume he watched me walk to the door. Couldn't lose his secret, couldn't let me out. I was too important.

So what would happen if I did like Medda said? Stopped this sleepless existence. _What's in Manhattan anyway? We've never had to worry about Jack's boys. Another gang? A rival one?_

I looked at myself in the mirror again. _I should wash my hair_, I thought, and slung a towel over my shoulders. _She loves me. I love her. She's better than my real mother. Always has been._ I wanted to trust that her funds would never go to support a latent drinking or opium problem, but I couldn't count on that, just like I couldn't count on Spot making it back to Brooklyn. I'd got home late, but I would still have to be out at my usual time in case he was hanging around to make sure I was out on time.

_Would he do that?_ I thought, dunking my head into the basin. I lifted it out, squeezed out the extra water, and began scrubbing with rose-scented soap. She never bought completely plain anything. _Is he that calculating, to keep me in Brooklyn that long? To see if I'd still get up, still do my two-penny job?_

The answer was yes. I could see it in the circles around my eyes, growing a deeper blue-black each year. I rinsed my hair, wrung it out again, rubbed the towel across it like Medda told me not to since it breaks your hair.

I was five whole years of tired.

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><p><em>Author's note:<em> Okay, I'm going to go work on a paper that's due tomorrow. I do appreciate reviews, they help so much. Anonymous reviews enabled :)


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